a public option, which you may remember, is that it actually did pass the house of representatives but never appeared again in the senate. it doesn't disappear. but a public option would always be there at a lower cost. what a great deal. >> there hasn't been a recent polling on this at all. but if it's going to do what they say it's going to do. i find it interesting that during the campaign and during the primary season, all the republicans talked about was repealing obama care. but michele bachman can't get any sponsors of her bill? >> isn't that interesting? fewer and fewer people, it seems, by the week, by the month, are interested in repealing obama care because as it rolls out, more and more people are actually gaining the

benefits. it had overwhelming public support, and we polled in the blue dog districts, the more conservative districts. >> that is the bottom line. thanks for joining me tonight. "the rachel maddow" show starts right now. >> thanks to you at home for staying with us this hour. on the morning of january 18th, 1989, that was a wednesday morning, this is what america woke up to. >> this is nbc news at sunrise. >> good morning. in stockton, california, officials still have no clue as to why a gunman sprayed an elementary school playground with automatic weapons fire. more from nbc's david burrington. >> all of the dead and most of the wounded youngsters were from

southeast asia, children of refugees. >> the five kids who died in that mass shooting were all between the ages of 6 and 9. the gunman was a 26-year-old man who killed himself on the scene that day. the weapon he used on that stockton, california schoolyard was an ak-47 assault rifle. the country was shocked by what happened that day. less than two months after that happened, the then president of the united states took executive action as president to ban the importation of some semi-automatic weapons. weapons that could be considered assault weapons. guns that he determined were not suitable for sporting purposes, which meant the president had the power to block them from being imported. president bush had the power to do that and says that

foreign-made weapons could only be imported to this country for civilian use if that use was generally recognized as being a sporting purpose. it was already the law, but he took executive action under that law to ban the importation of specific weapons. the gun control act of 1968 that gave him that power was passed in the wake of the assassinations robert kennedy and martin luther king. and it is what gave george h.w. bush to take that executive action that he took banning some rifles. in 1989, two months after that schoolyard massacre in stockton, california. years later, president clinton followed in his footsteps. president clinton, in 1998, took executive action as president to ban the importation of more than 50 different kinds of semiautomatic assault weapons.

this was in addition to the assault weapons ban. this was further action taken by the president alone in 1998. he took executive action to ban the importation of certain kinds of guns. today, president obama became yet another modern president to use his executive authority for reform of gun-related laws. president obama did not use his authority as president as his predecessors did. and i mean that in this sense. none of the executive actions that president obama did today have anything to do with banning specific weapons, banning the importation of specific weapons the way that previous presidents did. what distinguishes what

president obama did today is the breath of policy changes that he enacted. and, yes, on some access to some specific types of fire power in this country. but that is just one part of this very broad-based package of things. that is what is groundbreaking today. it is the breath of what he has proposed. it is that he has gone wider than any other president, not that he has gone farther than any other president toward restricting certain guns, he has gone wider. now, many of the actions are being denounced as tyranny but there are reminding relevant stakeholders in the country about laws that already exist. president will send an open letter to licensed gun dealers giving them guidance on how best

to facility background checks, if they choose to. the department of health and human services will provide a letter making sure that everyone knows that under existing law, mental health professionals can report people who may pose a direct and credible threat of violence. one of the president's executive actions calls for a letter to remind everybody of that existing law. otherwise known as tyranny. impeach him. the president's announcement today was not just executive actions, it was also calling on congress to pass legislative members. for example, he's calling for the department of justice to provide incentives under the existing cops program. that means officers who are specially trained. that encouragement will happen

from the justice department, and the president can order that happen as a matter of his executive authority. but, at the same time, he's also asking congress for something. he's asking congress for $150 million for law enforcement agencies so that they can spend the money to hire resource officers and psychologists and counselors. >> as soon as i'm finished speaking here, i will sit at that desk, and i will sign a directive giving law enforcement, schools, mental health professionals and the public health community some of the tools they need to help reduce gun violence. we will help schools. >> for the record, that is kind of what the nra has been demanding. remember the nra came out after newtown demanding that there must be armed officers in schools. president obama calmly today

said, yeah, sure. if schools want to have more armed officers in school, sure, they can do that. we'll just have to do a whole bunch of other things too. but your idea? sure, that's something we can do. in response, the nra is telling its members that they will stand and fight. that this will be the war of the century. woo, we got what we wanted. it took joe biden less than 29 months to meet with 229 groups in the process of coming up with this menu of options from which president obama assembled this plan today. the speed of this effort continues to outpace its own expectations. the president said he wanted expectations by the end of this month. it's not the end of the month yet. vice president biden initially said you won't get them at the end of the month. you're going to get them early, you're going to get them on the

15th. he then turned his recommendations in early. and now, today, the 16th, legislation is due to hit congress next week, even before the time that president obama initially said he just wanted to start considering what the recommendations might be. by that time, the senate is already due to have started hearings on not just recommendations, but actual legislation that they are putting forward. the political common wisdom is that speed is of the essence. it has been one month and two days and the sense of urgency that there must be a response to that tragedy.

>> in the month since 20 precious children and six brave adults were taken from us, more than 900 of our fellow americans have reportedly died at the end of a gun. 900 in the past month. every day we wait, that number will keep growing. >> the president speaking today to the urgency of the matter. what the president proposed today ended up taking washington by surprise. took political observers by surprise. factoring into his proposals that widespread cynicism that they could do nothing. the president did not do that. the president proposed not the

most aggressive gun regulation. but he proposed the most wide-ranging, most holistic, most comprehensive approach to the overall problem of gun violence that we have in this country. and the accommodation that he made about the political realities of this issue were not about how hard it is to get it done because of the other side. they were not about the self-proclaimed, self-fulfilling cliche of the gun lobby's power. it was not the nra is so powerful. he paid tribute to the power of the american people to influence congress to say yes to some things that even congress is not inclined to say yes to. >> the only way we can change is if the american people demand it.

and that doesn't mean from just certain parts of the country. we're going to need voices in those areas and those congressional districts where the tradition of gun ownership is strong to speak up. this will not happen unless the american people demand it. if parents and teachers, police officers and pastors, if hunters and sportsman, if every american stands up and says, enough, we suffered too much pain and care too much about our children to allow this to continue, then change will come. you know, in the letter that julia wrote me, she said i know that laws have to be passed by congress. but i beg you to try very hard. julie, i will try very hard.

but she's right. the most important changes we can make depend on congressional action. they need to bring these proposals up for a vote, and the american people need to make sure that they do. ask them if they support a ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. and if they say no, ask them why not? ask them what's more important. >> and let there be no doubt

that president obama sees the moment of political possibility here has been created by the country's conscience being shocked by what happened at newtown. >> and when i visited newtown last month, i spent some private time with many of the families who lost children that day, and one was the family of grace mcdonald. grace's parents are here. grace was 7 years old when she was struck down. gorgeous, caring, beautiful, young girl. she dreamed of becoming a painter. just before i left, chris, her father, gave me one of her paintings, and i hung it in my private study just off the oval office. and every time i look at that painting, i think about grace. and i think about the life that she lived and the life that lay

ahead of her. and, most of all, i think about how when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable among us, we must act now. for grace. for the 25 other innocent children and devoted educators who have so much left to give. >> we all knew that the president would be making proposals today about reform. about guns and gun legislation included in that reform. we did not know that what he was going to propose would be something this big. corey booker joins us next. new prilosec otc wildberry

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the new ram 1500. motor trend's 2013 truck of the year. the vast majority of americans support common sense gun regulations. and, clearly, the white house was listening. on the legislative side, we asked for background checks for all gun sales, and that is in the president's plan. we asked for restrictions on military-style, semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines, and that's there as well. we asked for tougher penalties for gun traffickers. it's in there. on the executive side, we urged him to appoint an atf director, increased prosecutions for those who lie on background checks, direct federal agencies to fill in the gaps on the background check data system. the president is doing all of those things. >> all of those things.

mayor bloomberg has been a rather pungent critic of president obama on this issue. not after today. the founder of mayor's against illegal guns, he's mayor of america's largest city. and, today, he thanked president obama and vice president biden for combatting gun violence. the recommendations included and went beyond the seven-step plan that this mayor's group has been pressing for. one of the highest profile members is new jersey's mayor. >> it's a historic night to be here. >> you said when you sat down, this was the barack obama that i was expecting. this is the guy you love and the guy you support. >> and he really went big. he went broad. and he understands there's no easy switch to flip. no one solution to this problem. you really need a broad,

across-the-base, comprehensive approach. he put together a list of common sense solutions. he paid a republican pollster and found out that these solutions are what gun owners agree with. as you and i were saying, the powerful thing for me is studying the problem. to know where the guns actually come from. most evidence shows that only about 4% of them are sourcing so many here in my city. even the cdc is starting an inquiry in what causes gun violence. is it video games? or is it something else? this is a comprehensive approach. incredible courage by the president. where it's not courage to me -- it's courage by the president, but where it's common sense to me is that most americans, when

you go through this, they agree. and perhaps i've been holding onto this with such joy, i've been holding on right on top to say that you should not be able to buy a gun without a background check. 74% of nra members agree with that. over 80% of gun owners. those gaping loopholes in the background check allow a terrorist who's on the no-fly list who can't fly to a gun show but they can go and buy a trunk full of weapons. this is a comprehensive approach. it's a thoughtful approach. and what i appreciated, newtown aggregious and tragic, we've had people killed by gun violence in my city that i believe is

preventable if we do the things that are in this proposal. >> you're highlighting that issue of the background check. let me take that as an example. in 1994 we had an assault weapons ban that ended up having an effect. it was seen with tons of loopholes. it was hard to do. it was hard to get done. with the gun -- with the background check, gun show loophole and the other things the president has tried to do. some of it with executive action and some of what he's asking congress to do, is it good enough? can it be done? is it too complicated? is it too big a country to manage a data base that good? >> it makes a difference. and i said before, you can see some of the data. women who are murdered by gunfire are 50% of them are murdered by people they know. those are people who domestic violence have misdemeanors or worse. when those folks can't access that secondary market, where states have dropped that level down 40%. there's no perfect solution. but doing things like this that are thoughtful, sensible and

common sense do make a difference. >> and you think logistically we're capable of pulling out? >> i'm happy about the things that are executive orders. but congress has to show an equal level of courage. and not even the people you think. congress people who are in strong gun tradition districts should step up now and say hey, wait a minute, i can get behind 80% of this, 90% of this. we all have one decision to make in life. either accept things the way they are or take responsibility for changing them. nobody could accept things the way they are now. violence that takes children from newark to newtown on a regular basis. even i don't agree with the

whole package, champion what you agree with. >> given that that is your view, which has been the hallmark of all of your time in public service the whole time i have known you, what did you make of the sustainability of the beltway cynicism? this whole idea that nothing can be done. it was all president makes the statement. it will never happen. someway or another, that was the esentially the entire reaction from the beltway. when i look at the polls, i feel, like, whoa, america really wants this to happen. that's some of the people that we've got right there on the screen. is this like mitt romney thinking he's going to win even though the polls said otherwise? >> i've seen this history. american history is a testimony to the impossible. we have the worst ingrained social problems, we banished poverty amongst our senior citizens.

i would have told you in a private conversation a year ago that i would never have imagined four states saying enough is enough. we should have a country that truly is equality under the law. so i'm constantly buoyed by the testimony that when we come together as a nation, there's nothing that we can't do. even when spiderwebs united, they can tie up a lion. we all have to say there's something we can do, something that's individual. so if we just let congress do this and surrender this idea that politics is a spectator sport, it is not. it is a full participatory endeavor. if we just sit back and watch on tv and give commentary about what's going on, nothing will change. we all need to step up.

>> mayor corey booker. you and i have to close a personal loop on something. we'll be right back. [ male announcer ] this is joe woods' first day of work. and his new boss told him two things -- cook what you love, and save your money. joe doesn't know it yet, but he'll work his way up from busser to waiter to chef before opening a restaurant specializing in fish and game from the great northwest. he'll start investing early, he'll find some good people to help guide him, and he'll set money aside from his first day of work to his last, which isn't rocket science. it's just common sense.

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we're back with newark, new jersey mayor, corey booker. you said there was something going on in newark. >> yeah, it's a really innovative program where we've taken the actual weapons of crimes. now we're using them of instrument of more buybacks. so here's a piece of jewelry

with a serial number on it from an actual gun that we recovered from a crime. >> that's the weapon's serial number? >> that's the weapons serial number. it's amazing. the caliber collection, they're called. and the proceeds goes to more gun buybacks. i know many people poo poo them, but we have parents who will bring in the guns of their children. we have social activists that will convince guys to turn in their guns. so this is one strategy. this is not a cure-all. but everybody has the power to do something little, something small and to make a difference. so i brought you and a certain significant other that i like a lot, as well. >> this is awesome. we crashed their web site the last time we talked about them on the show. we'll talk about them very gently. this is newark on the inside. congratulations, i know you've been waiting for this kind of day in washington for a long time. we'll be right back.

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relevant context today as a verb. as in trolling. in our relative context today, trolling means that you're trying to get a rise out of somebody. you're trying to get them to take some bait. that you're dangling with nefarious hope. you're trying to get reaction from somebody you are counting on getting it from. the etymology of trolling is a little confusing. the way we use the word now, especially online, could come from billy goats gruff or goats gruff or the funny little monster under the bridge. they're afraid of the troll. or maybe the idea of trolling comes from the high art of puttering along at a slow speed in a fishing boat. >> explain to me why retard is inappropriate. >> there is a movement onto

normalize pedophilia. >> since when the hell do we americans believe in separation of church and state. >> trolling is a key part of the conservative media business model. these guys say stuff all of the time that they do not intend to be persuasive. they're not trying to explain something or to bring people along to their way of thinking. they're just doing something to attract their attention. and hopefully, condemnation and outrage from the mainstream, particularly from liberals. they want the offend you. hey, attention is attention and clicks are clicks on the web site. bad publicity is still publicity. but more importantly, the key part of their base audience that they are trying to monotize likes anyone who gets condemned by the mainstream. it's a badge of honor. it makes people sign up for the daily mega-dido buy gold newsletter or whatever.

and pay their $9.95 for exclusive on tv. it's a schtick, right, it is a schtick that pays. and it pays big dollars to big name conservatives and it pays small dollars to others. maybe you saw some poor guy trying to get national attention for charging liberals more than conservatives at a restaurant that he owns. he wants attention for a restaurant. maybe some combative, conservative business owner just to stick a thumb in the eye of all of those offended liberals. and that guy, the restaurant guy with the pay attention to me public city stunt, he is trolling. he is a troll. donald trump is a troll.

she used to be on saturday night live. look, look, it's a troll. we see trolling sometimes in elected officials, too. when a politician says something deliberately provocative in front of an audience because they're banking on firing up a smaller group of people who enjoy the way that speaker can make that other audience feel. congressman steve king is kind of a permanent troll. >> we could also electrify this wire with the kind of current that wouldn't kill someone but would simply by a discouragement from them. we do that with livestock all of the time. >> comparing immigrants to livestock and using a visual aid to do so on the house floor. here's another. >> a poet once said life can be a challenge, life can seem impossible, but it's never easy when there's so much on the line. >> he was trolling the entire

democratic process at that point. here's another. >> trolling. congressman allen west, former congressman allen west, begging america please be outraged by me, please condemn me. i live to cause pointless outrage. i am a troll. the thing about trolling is that the troll, by definition, is not serious. they're not serious about what they're saying. by definition, they're saying what they say only to make somebody mad. that they can drive otherwise serious people talking about serious things to be seriously distracted. they love the distraction and

the disruption. they love deliberately causing it. trolls serve a purpose. but no one should ever think that they're trying to be taken seriously. >> are the president's kids more important than yours? then why is he skeptical? >> besides the obvious fact that presidents get secret service protection whether they want it or not, president obama happens to be just fine with armed security in schools if that's what they want to do. the nra did not just put out a 30 second version of the safety of the president's daughters advertising today. it's a 4:30 minute version of the ad which means it's not for tv, it's for their base.

and in the long version, the trolling gets really obvious. they spend more than a minute of this thing proving how mad the rest of the world is at the nra for proposing armed guards in schools. >> this is a simple idea from a simple guy. >> there's no research that says putting more firearms is going to make anybody who's sitting around safer. >> you, sir, are [bleep] in the head. >> if it's crazy to have police to protect our children, then call me crazy. >> please, call me crazy. i love it when you call me crazy. i love it when you call me troll food. that's my whole reason for being. trolls have a purpose in our politics.

they help nearby unpopular positions as pseudopolitical actors by tricking people who ought to know better into punching down at them. but if that is the way you are operating in our political system, if you have to troll for it, if you're going for purposeful out rage and nothing more serious than that. it is also pretty good evidence that you're not all that good in discussion. and, you know, the nra has proved its political impotence in recent electoral politics. and they did it in stark, empirical terms. the nra's main pac spent $11 million on candidates, more than 99% was wasted. 0.83% of the nra's money went to the results that they wanted in that election. in a year that was not kind, they showed themselves to be a weaker political force than carl rove and the chamber of commerce. the nra set a new bar.

we should change the name of this graph to not anymore. not if you're paying attention to the nra in this last election. and when president obama announced his plan for reforming gun laws, this is the reaction. obama guns plan meets fast resistance and why obama's gun plan may be doomed. and nra chief on obama's real agenda. oh, yeah, let's go ask the trolls. this is how we see the debate about gun laws. this is how the nra has taught us to see debate with democrats and law enforcement and victims of violence and most of the american people on one side and themselves, the nra, as an equal and perhaps greater force on the other. that's how they taught us to see it and the beltway is happy to write that down. but i do not think that's how the debate is actually working in real life. here's another example. look at this. this is the home page of the

hill newspaper today in washington, d.c. and they, like everybody else, is calling for gun reform. can we zoom in on the other part of that there? yeah, this is the ad over on the right. my son was murdered in the mass shooting of colubine. it's sort of the yearbook for members of congress. it's already shown that it can compete and win. it's being taken very, very seriously. >> joining us now, steve, it's always a pleasure. thanks for being here. >> sure. >> do you think it is fair to call the nra a troll? that they are going for outrage in order to please their base rather than trying to persuade anybody? >> yes, outrage to raise money. and it's something we've seen before. and i'm struck by something that

happened, i guess, 17, 18 years ago, back in 1995. i forgot what the exact controversy was, but the nra referred to them as jack booded thugs. if you remember, it was george hw bush at the time, who, at that moment, resigned his lifelong membership in the nra. now, at the time the nra was kind of ascending. you had just had the 1994 midterms. democrats believed they had lost. they were scared. he didn't have much of a political impact. but i'm thinking of the current debate right now. it's doing the exact same thing as it did then. except gun control is on the table in a very serious way. they have felt political pressure to toe the line. they want to be antigun control. they don't want to anger the nra. right now, there's enormous pressure and opportunity to vote for real gun control.

the nra is making it easy for politicians to say you know what, these guys are a bunch of jokesters. they're not taking it seriously. there's been a real tragedy here that requires a serious response. so i think the nra might be hurting themselves. >> and their incentives here make this make more sense. you know that if president obama got every single thing that he proposed today, america would be a nation with 300 million guns. you don't actually do anything to meaningfully take away the gun ownership base that you've already got. you continue to exist as the national rifle association. you've defined yourself as a hard liner. you've defined for the president as a tyrant and you can therefore continue to raise even more money than you've got now and be slightly ineffective but

definitely well-monetized pressure group. >> and so much of their success, really, for the last 24 year, has been his appearance that exists in the heads of democratic politicians that you don't mess with these guys because you are going to lose at the polls. and i think the most dangerous thing for the nra to come out of the 2012 election is that the voters they were scared of losing by turning off the nra, by going against the nra, they don't necessarily need them to win elections anymore. you don't need to send john kerry out goose hunting. you can go out there and the republicans have been calling them the gun control party. you're already paying the political price for it. >> that's exactly right. steve, very smart. senior writer at salon. steve, thank you. spot on. all right, the best new thing in the world tonight involves my favorite live news moment maybe ever.

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this is a map of north and west africa, in terms of these countries being in the news recently, there is a trend here, right? in the last couple of years there have been regime-changing

revolutions, here in egypt, libya and tunisia. we talked to richard engel last night and we discussed areas where the al-qaeda-linked areas are trying to take over. they are trying to topple the government there. the french went in this weekend, then the french said on monday they were sending in even more troops. the u.s. had reportedly thought the french were going it alone. but on tuesday, a whole bunch of african countries said they, too, would send help. it was togo, ghana, and senegal, all sending troops. at the same time algeria said they would let them use air space. today, it is now an attack, a major hostage situation involving civilians from a bunch of other countries, civilians including americans.

it happened in algeria, three americans and others were taken at a natural gas facility partly owned by bp. they were from ireland, canada, and france. the natural gas facility was here in a remote area of northeastern algeria, the group claiming responsibility says it was retaliation for them using air space in mali. he has reportedly struck out on his own now. according to the algerian government, the hostage-takers were traveling in three cars with lots of guns and first tried to attack a bus transporting employees who worked there. when that failed, they reportedly went to the place where the employees were housed. it was there they were able to take 20 to 40 people hostage, including americans. there were many, many algerians who work at the plant, as well, but they were being released as

the hostage-takers hold on to the americans. there is no further information because of their safety, but they have issued a travel warning for mali and the neighboring countries. we have military advancing on that that country, the expanding involvement of troops from a bunch of different nearby nations. and in one of the neighboring nations that is helping in a small way, we have a neighboring group holding dozens of civilian hostages in retaliation. at a giant, multi, multi-nationally owned gas company. it puts the whole thing of a debt crisis in perspective, right, we'll keep you posted. i have low testosterone. there, i said it.

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topical testosterone replacement therapy, increases testosterone when used daily. women and children should avoid contact with application sites. discontinue androgel and call your doctor if you see unexpected signs of early puberty in a child, or signs in a woman, which may include changes in body hair or a large increase in acne, possibly due to accidental exposure. men with breast cancer or who have or might have prostate cancer, and women who are or may become pregnant or are breastfeeding, should not use androgel. serious side effects include worsening of an enlarged prostate, possible increased risk of prostate cancer, lower sperm count, swelling of ankles, feet, or body, enlarged or painful breasts, problems breathing during sleep, and blood clots in the legs. tell your doctor about your medical conditions and medications, especially insulin, corticosteroids, or medicines to decrease blood clotting. so...what do men do when a number's too low? turn it up! [ male announcer ] in a clinical study, over 80% of treated men had their t levels restored to normal. talk to your doctor about all your symptoms. get the blood tests. change your number. turn it up. androgel 1.62%.

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okay, best new thing in the world today, house republicans left d.c. today for williamsburg, virginia, to go to the annual retreat. a three-day event, called the 13th congress of tomorrow, which is weird, as opposed to the congress of last month. anyway, it is pollsters, speeches, and political.com reports that this year there will be two motivational speakers for house republicans. one toured as a comedian with garth brooks, the other, an adventurer, the world's first blind person to climb mount everest. is this familiar? anybody remember one of the most awesome news bloopers of all time.

>> right after the break, we'll interview the man who climbed the highest mountain in the world, mount everest. but, he is gay -- excuse me, he is blind. >> he is gay, i mean, blind. an albuquerque news anchor in 2001, five years later the clip was uploaded to youtube for some reason, and many got to enjoy the best gay, not gay joke of all time. and yes, that is the same gay-blind mountain climber who will be motivating the republican congress members, the best thing about this, he was the most famous blind athlete in the world, and who really is not gay, he has demonstrated nothing but the best attitude about this blooper since he first heard it happening, as it was happening.